16 Aug 2011 01:58:40
After Ballard's death in 2009 it went on sale this month for £320,000, despite protest by fans that the three-bedroom home, which is in a somewhat dilapidated state, should instead become a museum. It has now been withdrawn from sale to be rented out, with a new family due to move in this month.
• While one of Charles Dickens' London homes is now a museum dedicated to the writer, you can get your hands on the clifftop home in Broadstairs, Kent where he and his family holidayed for 22 years – if you have £2m to spare. Dickens wrote David Copperfield while staying in the now Grade II-listed turreted mansion and the views supposedly inspired Bleak House, after which the home was named following Dicken's death. If that's not enough, according to the estate agents it was also visited by another Victorian literary giant, Wilkie Collins.
• If JK Rowling is your obsession then you've just missed out. Church Cottage, the mid-19th century Gothic home near Chepstow, Gwent, where the author grew up, has gone under offer only weeks after being put up for sale for £400,000.
Apart from more traditional attractions such as a well-tended garden and wooden floors, temptations included an inscription on a bedroom windowframe reading "Joanne Rowling slept here circa 1982" and a cupboard under the stairs, perhaps the inspiration for Harry Potter's bedroom. There's even a trapdoor in the living room.
